Postcards from the Cinema

by Serge Daney, Paul Grant (Translator)

Overview

Postcards from the Cinema is the book Serge Daney, one of the greatest of film critics, never wrote. It is based around an interview that was to be the starting point for a book, a project cut short by Daney's death. Postcards turns a history of cinema into a profound meditation on the art and politics of film.Daney's passionate and lucid engagement with film, combined with his concern for journalistic clarity, effectively created film criticism as a genre. Equally at home with the theories of Deleuze, Lacan and Debord as he was with the movie-making of Bunuel, Godard and Ray, Daney was also a fan of Jerry Lewis and Hitchcock. At the same time - and before his time - he championed the critical analysis of television and other audio-visual media.Long-awaited, this is the first book-length translation of Daney's work, testimony to a life lived with a fierce love of film.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781845206512
Publisher:	Berg Publishers
Publication date:	01/01/2007
Edition description:	Translation
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.34(d)

About the Author

Serge Daney was a writer and eventually editor-in-chief for the highly influential film journal Cahiers du cinéma. He went on to write for the newspaper Libération, and founded the film journal Trafic.

Translated from the French by Paul Grant

Table of Contents

Introduction by Paul Grant
Preface * The Tracking Shot in Kapo * Cine-biography * Cinema and History * Travelling Cinephile * A Night in Ronda * Cinema Would be the Promise of the World * Cinema and Communism: In Defense of a Counter Society * Experience: From Cahiers to Libération * Cinema and Television: Departure and Returban * The Two Cinemas * Notes

Editorial Reviews

"This long overdue introduction in English to the greatest French film critic since AndrÈ Bazin helps to show what keeps Daney's work vital, eye-opening, and even timely." --Jonathan Rosenbaum, Film Critic, Chicago Reader

"Perched well above cinema studies, Serge Daney wrote and spoke of films in thrilling sentences, unrivalled in insight, moral fervor and sheer genius. Easily the best critic of his day." --Dudley Andrew, Yale University

"Serge Daney was the end of criticism as I understood it." --Jean Luc Godard

"Only Serge Daney could serve as the guide through this labyrinth of images." --Wim Wenders

"Serge Daney knew something about cinema that no one else knew." --Olivier Assayas

"Our most scrupulous and inspired film critic." --Raymond Bellour

"Cinema is the only thing at our disposal with which we can recognize ourselves in today's images. As an instrument it's inevitably inadequate, but it's the only one." --Serge Daney

From the Publisher

Cinema is the only thing at our disposal with which we can recognize ourselves in today's images. As an instrument it's inevitably inadequate, but it's the only one.

Serge Daney

Our most scrupulous and inspired film critic.

Raymond Bellour

Serge Daney knew something about cinema that no one else knew.

Olivier Assayas

Only Serge Daney could serve as the guide through this labyrinth of images.

Wim Wenders

Serge Daney was the end of criticism as I understood it.

Jean Luc Godard

Perched well above cinema studies, Serge Daney wrote and spoke of films in thrilling sentences, unrivalled in insight, moral fervor and sheer genius. Easily the best critic of his day.

Yale University Dudley Andrew

This long overdue introduction in English to the greatest French film critic since AndrÈ Bazin helps to show what keeps Daney's work vital, eye-opening, and even timely.

Jonathan Rosenbaum